How should I fly this in sim? I am new to the gamemode but not new to air RB at all.
Stay fast, use your radar
use the radar for…? I can’t even get IFF confirmations with this half the time
Radar is great for IFF, dunno why it doesn’t work for you
In SB, situational awareness is everything, pay close attention to your RWR, radar and what’s going on around you. Also know when it’s best to keep your radar off (since it’s pinging enemy RWR’s). For the Mig21 the radar range is pretty low so I prefer to always keep it on since it occasionally will alert you of someones presence, however you’re mostly gonna rely on finding people visually
There’s nothing wrong with the IFF of your radar, you just have to understand it. Like most things it doesn’t have pulse-doppler at the BR though so it’s best to fly low so there’s minimal ground clutter behind enemies.
Other than that it’s pretty solid in a dogfight at it’s BR, bring 1-2 R3R so you can kill both head-on and rear aspect. Use afterburner to get up to speed, when chasing people down and during dogfights, but generally keep it off all other times, it just drinks fuel and puts you at a disadvantage if you’re going too fast when potentially merging with someone.
But yeah, it’s a solid jet. Fast, great interceptor, good missiles, strong engine, decent dogfighter… Your limiting factor in sim will always be situational awareness, make sure you have a solid controls setup, potentially switch to controller if you don’t have flight-stick.
Generally with all jets in sim, try to fly in a defensive manner, minimise threatening areas around you, like try to approach from an angle you know is safe, and always pay attention to directions you’re not sure about. Don’t just fly into the middle of the map at 500 meters altitude since then you’ll have possible threats all around and below you.
it doesnt give IFF unless it can successfully see it yes? Ground clutter makes the radar not give me returns
You can’t as it doesn’t have functional RWR.
Stay behind, play support and wait for the time when GJ pulls its head outta its ass and make SPO10 work like an actual SPO10.
I have found success today playing it in the 10.7-9.7 bracket against mostly F-4E/FG.1/FGR.2/Mirage 3s
Aaah, yes…MF is 10.7. I’ve been playing Bis at 11.0 and it’s useless.
I can imagine fighting that higher bracket of gen4s
It’s my plane with highest number of kills of them all got (647)K/D(191) in it. I started flying it when F-14A was just released and started spanking those tomcats. What you do is:
- pick big maps,
- forget the radar, turn it off as soon as you take-off
- take full fuel and save fuel - fly at 95% throttle most of the time even at takeoff, afterburner only for emergency, unless you want to intercept someone over your own base and RTB quickly. with AB you will drain full tank in 7min so it is cruicial to keep fuel for those unexpected long dogfights
- take countermeasures pod
- fly very low and sneaky, use hills and valleys, go to areas with enemy presence and spot the dot
- after spotting the dot, estimate visually if it is close or not, use afterburner now to intercept
- turn on your radar only for a short moment when you are behind the dot and it is still not big enough at max zoom to visually identify. use radar to identify friend or foe, as soon as you know - turn it off
- close in so the enemy wings fill at least half of your aiming reticule
- fire R-60, kill
- turn off AB, hit the deck and continue sneaky low level flight at sub sonic speed
- in general avoid 1vs1 dogfights against F-8/F-5/F-14
- good tactic for RTB is, when you have 3min of fuel left - full AB and climb to high altitude, then glide to AF after your fuel is 0. I can literally RTB across whole big map just gliding from 7km alt
In Dogfight:
- don’t go slow, keep your speed above 500km/h
- vertical is where you can win against your opponents, pencil is just an engine with wings in the end
- 1 circle is your fight (kinda obvious)
- you have good roll rate - use it in defence and any rolling scissors situation to your advantage
- you can use flaps briefly in critical situations like at the top of a loop, but retract as soon as you dive to get speed, this does not mean turn fight with flaps on - avoid
Here is my struggle/fight vs F-5 two years ago:
Activate SAS.
Otherwise the plane wobbles.
I flew one month without it and thought the FM is broken . 😅